Stephen Sondheim is as legendary as it gets in theatre circles, yet he hasn’t had a bona fide hit in more than a decade. Yet “even as his own creative powers appear to dim, Sondheim is enjoying a golden age of revivals, reassessments, retrospectives and tributes.” In fact, many Sondheim shows now being revived to great acclaim were popular and critical failures the first time around (Assassins, for instance.) “Wise and mortality-haunted beyond his years, he’s made a career exploring themes that others on Broadway rarely touch — emotional ambiguity, moral ambivalence, the impermanence of love, the terrors of connection, death. But somehow now, more than ever, Sondheim seems a man out of joint with his time.”